I am a girl and I play video games. Shocked? Please, don’t mistake me. I don't mean to say that I play games like
Farmville or Mystery Manor on Facebook like some girls do in their boredom or
absence of social activity and then claim they are ‘girl gamers.’ I mean I play
real games on real consoles where I stay up for hours on end trying to kick ass
and take names. Shocked now? Well, I
know I'm not the only one as I have several friends who are girls who play
games for hours on end as well. And yet,
when we go to conventions, or start debating the merits of say World of Warcraft over Final Fantasy XIV with our male
counterparts, they look at us like we've grown a second head. I see your skeptical look. I want you to take note: I am not saying that
I am a girl gamer. I make the
distinction that I am female and I play games.
Why the distinction? Because
somehow, someway, it has become popular to be a ‘girl gamer,’ which I think
stems from the fact that somewhere girls decided that was the way to attract a
boy.
So, why is it perfectly acceptable for guys to be gamers while girls have to
be segregated as 'girl gamers?' We all
play the same games, we all lose the same amount of sleep trying to beat just
one more boss, and we all know what it’s like to feel that depression after
finishing a really great game before we can go on to the next one. Our head is still loaded in the world of the
video game we just finished, there needs to be time to mourn the loss of
something so familiar that it felt like family for a time. If anyone is nodding their head in agreement,
then you know exactly what I mean, and that makes you a gamer. It shouldn't
matter if you're a guy or a girl, and yet somehow it does.
So why do some of us girls become the awesome gamers that we are? Well,
speaking from my own experience, I grew up with boys in the house and they all
played video games. I was the youngest,
and only girl, therefore, I never got a turn on the Nintendo (that's NES,
old-school style). When I did get my
turn, as dictated by my mom or grandma to the boys, I almost always died within
the first few seconds, and that was it. My turn was over. That is so
unfair! Well, eventually, I started
staying inside while all my cousins and brothers were outside playing on their
skateboards or break-dancing on pieces of cardboard, and I built up my skills
and got good at making Mario move the way I wanted him to.
That was the beginning of my obsession with video games. I'm sure if I had other girls around me
growing up, I wouldn't have been so concerned with what the boys were
doing. Turns out, I ended up becoming
more involved in video games then even my male family members, because I put in
more time playing games. Some of my
earliest reading materials were video game magazines. It was so long ago that I can’t even remember
the names of those magazines, but I do remember that they were the ones in
which I memorized the card layout from Super
Mario Bros. 3. Incidentally, I still
have those card configurations memorized.
You start with the card in the top right corner, and that’s the one that
tells you which pattern to follow. You
remember, right? It was always so
exciting when that little ace card would pop up to give me freebies. It still is exciting, I downloaded SMB3 to my Wii as soon as I saw it available.
I remember when I got my XBOX360
and played an online game, I tried using a headset for the first time and was
talking along with all the other players, all males, and everyone stopped
talking when they heard my voice. It was
eerie how quiet everyone got before the onslaught of questions. They all started asking who I was, wanted to
know why I was playing Dead or Alive 4,
if I was really playing, if I was really a girl, blah blah blah. And at that
time, I was young enough and naive enough to fall in the trap of trying to
prove my gamerness. Because it is obvious
to the guys I was interacting with that I wasn't actually a girl, I was some
prepubescent boy pretending to be a girl.
Or I was some guy's girlfriend wearing the headset while she watched him
play. Because I couldn’t possibly be playing video games of my own accord, I’m
a girl.
But I am a girl who actually enjoys a past time that is traditionally
thought of as a guy’s past time. The reason
I play video games is because I get a similar entertainment as to when I read
books, for me, it’s an escape. I get to
be someone else for a time, enter another world where I'm a superhero or a
kickass pink ninja. I save the
world. I save the prince. I am not a damsel in distress, unless that's
the angle I'm playing, because I can be quite the impressive actress, so long
as I’m seen and not heard. I don’t make
that mistake anymore, because even though girl gamers are out there, they’re
still not as commonplace as they should be.
You see, I play video games just as well, if not better, than any other
male out there, so what does it matter that I'm a girl? Do I sit around playing
video games in my underwear? Well, do
you? I’m 95% certain I know the answer to
that question.
The idea of the ‘girl gamer’ has been glorified beyond the simple uplifting
of putting women on a pedestal. She's
the Holy Grail and yet when she's found, she's shunned or met with
disbelief. Believe me when I say, we are
out here, and we are not all pretending to be something we're not. We have forums and Facebook pages, we laugh
at stereotypical girl gamer memes that show up on social media sites, such as the
scantily clad Playboy bunny biting her lip seductively as she holds up a gaming
controller of the newest platform like she knows the difference between a Playstation 4 or an XBOX One. I’m also 95% certain
that she doesn’t. That’s the difference between
the type of girl gamer she is, and the type that I am. I know how to kick ass on
Call of Duty. I get sentimental over RPG storylines. And I am a sucker for insanely crisp graphics with
a backdrop of gorgeously hand drawn works of art. I am more than a girl gamer. I’m a gamer. I leave you with the words from one of my favorite
book trilogies, “May the odds be ever in your favor.”
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